


Untitled

by babykid528



Category: West Wing
Genre: Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-08
Updated: 2010-04-08
Packaged: 2017-10-21 23:53:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/231270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babykid528/pseuds/babykid528
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Molly struggles with prose and quits writing all together. Sam has the solution.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Untitled

**Author's Note:**

  * For [raedbard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/raedbard/gifts).



> A little birthday ficlet for my dear friend, raedbard! <3

Molly's no Toby. She doesn't write raw, evocative prose: concise and bare were always her dad's specialty, never hers. Her prose is littered with metaphors and hyperbole, the likes of which even Sam has never seen. Toby tries not to grimace as he reads it. Huck doesn't even bother trying.

Stupid Huck and his mastery of gaps and unsaid things that speak volumes more than the minimal numbers of words he does use. Molly can't help hating him, just a little, every time he presses pen to paper. No matter what she does, she overstates and bogs down every piece of fiction she tries to write - every character sinks like lead or is lost, helplessly, in her overdrawn descriptions.

After a while, she just stops trying.

No matter what Huck says to encourage her, no matter how many new journals and pens Toby silently gifts her, Molly won't write.

It takes Sam three months to fix things. Well, three months to realize how to fix them. It really only takes him four hours to fix it: that's how long it takes Molly to read through _Leaves of Grass_ , cover to cover. Instantly, she's rifling through her box of empty journals and brand new pens. She'd never written so fast before in all her life.

  
 _The Girl With Three Last Names  
-Molly Wyatt-Seaborn-Zeigler_

 _I have three fathers._

 _A man my mother married  
Who taught me to play piano  
And how to make thumb-print cookies  
for Santa on Christmas Eve  
who I love more than I ever thought I would_

 _A man my mother used to be married to  
Who graciously gifted me half my DNA  
And taught me how to care  
at depths I didn't think were reachable  
my daddy, my greatest hero and love_

 _And a man my daddy married  
Who taught me how to write  
And how to unleash myself upon the world  
with inky scratchings I once swore off  
who I'll always owe every lovingly scribbled word_

 _They say my brother and I were born  
hand in hand  
into a broken home_

 _But I know better_

 _They're just jealous of my three last names  
of my three wonderful fathers  
of all the extra love weaving us together  
A foundation impossible to dent, let alone crack_

 _No, there's nothing broken about it_

It's certainly no Walt Whitman, Molly thinks, but it's enough to cause Huck to take her hand in his, like he hasn't done since they were kids. And it's enough to make Toby swallow difficultly before hugging her close and kissing her temple. And it's definitely more than enough to cause Sam to gather her up in his arms and squeeze her breathless. Just her name, written this way for the first time, is more than enough to cause the tears that fill his wide-eyes.  



End file.
